Remembering Nii-san
by ChoppingBoard
Summary: One-shots on how Hinata remembers Neji and vignettes on Hinata's family after the war.
1. Sunflowers

A/N: SPOILER ALERT. Don't read if you haven't read Chapter 700 of the manga and don't want any spoilers.

Headcanon is that Neji had a thing for sunflowers, thus, the chapter 700 scene featuring Hinata and Himawari. Also, from what I watched on the latter episodes, Hinata wasn't stuttering anymore? So... not much stuttering on this fic. Correct me if I'm wrong.

_Italics are thoughts._

Here goes.

Disclaimer: Naruto is not mine. I sure hoped I did.

**Remembering Nii-san **

**By ChoppingBoard **

Hinata tried not to be intrusive with the scroll her brown-haired cousin was dealing with. She noticed he had been staring at it, then closing it again repeatedly. He had done the cycle 6 times already. That is, if his first one was when she entered the kitchen.

Clutching an apple with his right hand, Neji furrowed his eyebrows. _I can't let myself be defeated by this scroll. _

Noticing he was getting more uneasy, the blue-haired girl took a seat across him and pushed a cup of hot tea to him. "Is something wrong nii-san?"

Neji sighed, as if accepting defeat. He shrugged his shoulders and decided to let it out. He was with Hinata after all, he was certain she wouldn't judge him. "I'll be leaving for a mission soon but I can't seem to figure out the difference between these." He opened up the scroll to reveal inscriptions and drawings of flowers. Side by side were the pictures of Sunflowers, Bush Daisies, Coneflowers, Yellow Daisies, and False Sunflowers.

Hinata grinned, so this was what he was looking at. In all fairness to Neji, the flowers did look similar. He was no doubt a genius, but it was acceptable to some extent that he didn't excel in the subject of flowers. "I see. How is this related to your mission?"

"My team and I are to retrieve several blooms of sunflowers to aid in the Hokage-sama's research. She mentioned that there are special types of sunflowers that only bloomed near the Hidden Village of Mist" He responded.

Hinata thought for a while, but when she was about to say something, a servant gently knocked on the half-open shoji door.

"Hinata-sama, please excuse me." the servant gently bowed to her and turned to the other person in the room. "Neji-san, Hiashi-sama wishes to speak with you."

Neji nodded, but turned to Hinata first. "Hinata-sama, was there something you wanted to say?"

The blue-haired girl smiled and shook her head.

–-

After speaking with the leader of the clan, Neji decided to retreat to his quarters. _Looks like I'm still going on this mission after all._ He initially thought that Hiashi will ask him to do something important, but it was just about several techniques which he thought Neji might've picked up from his training.

–-

The next morning, Neji found himself on the kitchen again, clutching an apple on the right hand, with the scroll on his left.

"Good morning Neji-niisan!" Hinata sounded very ecstatic and Neji couldn't help but look at her and smirk.

"Good morning, Hinata-sama. You seem to be in a very good mood."

"I am!" She scurried to sit on the chair across his and mechanically ate an apple.

Neji's left eye twitched when he noticed that Hinata was hurriedly eating the fruit. "You seem to be in a hurry."

"Ahhh, don't mind me."

"I'll take my leave then."

"W-w-wait!" Her apple was half-eaten but she hurriedly stood up. "No, I'm in a hurry because I wanted to show you something!"

–-

"Here you go!" Hinata spread her arms proudly at the 5 jars of yellow flowers in front of her.

They were at a pond near the Hyuuga library and Neji couldn't help but smile at the effort. The 5 jars of flowers looked familiar, then he finally realized that those were the flowers he had been studying.

"Hinata-sama, you shouldn't have."

"I insist. You know, when I was younger, I also had a hard time with these flowers. But mom..." she trailed off for a few seconds, then continued. "My mom helped me identify these."

They spent the entire morning talking about the flowers and there were several instances that Neji had to activate Byakugan to see if it looked different with the bloodline limit.

–-

The next day, the Hokage requested Team 9's presence in the Hokage tower. They were supposed to leave by lunch time for the mission but it was still early, so a quick meeting won't be too bad.

Neji smirked as he eyed 5 jars of yellow flowers on the Hokage's table. It was so similar to how Hinata presented the flowers the day before.

Tenten and Lee exchanged glances as they noticed the expression on their white-eyed companion's face.

They were asked to properly identify the flowers, to which he continued to smirk and to the horror of his teammates.

The door suddenly opened and Gai was seen dragging Shikamaru.

"HOKAGE-SAMA! TEAM 10 IS HERE!" The green beast of Konoha exclaimed and he later found the other people in the room clasping their hand over their ears.

"Aa. In that case, Team 9, you're dismissed. Team 10 will be handling it from here." Tsunade clasped her hands together in delight. "I'll let you know if there's another mission for you."

Tenten, Lee, and Neji looked impassive as they heard the news. It was true that Team 10, Ino specifically, would be perfect for this mission. "Hai" they said in unison.

–-

Neji met Hinata again in the kitchen. It was about time for lunch.

"Neji-niisan! I prepared a bento for you." Hinata was still preparing something on the sink but pointed towards a lunchbox wrapped in white cloth on the table. "For your mission"

"Ah Hinata-sama, thank you for preparing this. Unfortunately... Fortunately, we won't be going." he offered a smile to the blue-haired girl across the room. It had come to this despite all the effort Hinata made and he even memorized everything.

"Oh..." she trailed off, unsure of what to say.

"Gai-sensei met Shikamaru on his way to the Hokage Tower this morning. Hokage-sama then decided it would be better to have Team 10 handle it." He walked closer to the table to remove the white cloth from the bento. He removed the lid and saw his favorite food, herring soba. "I wouldn't definitely put this to waste, let's eat Hinata-sama."

"Hai."

–-

After that, the sunflower had been an inside joke between the two of them. Neji would give her sunflowers if he happened to pass by a field on his way home. The bright-yellow bloom with alternating leaves with serrated edges was forever etched in his mind. He even joked to Hinata how it was very fitting for her, a flower which blossoms towards the sun.

It was his way of letting Hinata know that he appreciated that day she spent on lecturing him about flowers and that he remembered everything.

–-

**Chapter 700**

"**Mama, do you think uncle likes them?"**

"**Of course. Since those flowers have the same name as you, Himawari"**

**FIN**

A/N: Hai translates to yes in English.

Sorry I'm out of fluff these days. I personally hate drama/angst fics but I just had to get this out of my system.

I've been noticing a lot of hate being hurled to one another with the shipping wars though I have to admit, I didn't also like the pairings at the last chapter and also what ultimately happened to Hinata. I just hope it would stop and people would just respect the pairings each person is rooting for, canon or non-canon. Plausible or crack.

ANNNDDD reviews are appreciated. Thank you in advance!


	2. Herring Soba

A/N: Was planning to only have this fic as a one-shot, but I saw something on tumblr which I immediately associated with this story.

maplesugar85. tumblr . com . post/105571829427/its-hard-to-eat-ramen-when-you-have-such-long (remove spaces on the first few characters)

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Masashi Kishimoto does.

**Remembering Nii-san**

**by ChoppingBoard**

Chapter 2 - Herring Soba

Hinata was late for dinner. Team 8's training was supposed to last until 5:00pm but Kurenai asked them if they can drop by and have some tea. She hurriedly entered her room and quickly glanced up the wall clock: 8:00pm. She sighed. She knew Neji would be back today from his mission and he shared a few stories over dinner when Hinata asked. She appreciated that they were now on good terms. Regrettably, she missed this dinner so she would have to catch him in the morning.

She carefully set her soiled weapons aside and slowly made her way to the bathroom.

–-

Hinata headed to the kitchen after her much needed bath. She hoped there might be food left so she wouldn't need to prepare anything. What greeted her were three bowls set aside on the table. She silently mused if there were 2 other people who missed dinner. It was customary for the cooks to leave a few bowls in the table, in case someone comes home much later.

As she opened the bowl, she smiled, the dinner for that night was Herring Soba. Neji's favorite food.

Hinata lazily pulled one stool and used her right hand to drag one bowl towards her. The bowl emitted a nice aroma as she lifted the plate covering it.

She frowned as she noticed several strands of her hair found their way to her soup as she ate. Normally, she would have her hair tie on her left wrist, but she forgot about it this time. She tried to lift the bowl again to her lips but several hairs still dipped on the soup. Sighing, she wondered if someone would berate her if she used chopsticks on her hair. It was the kitchen after all, there won't be any shortage of it.

She grabbed a new pair of chopsticks and slowly formed her hair to a messy bun. Hinata tried to remember Ino's voice as she taught her how to do it with the eating utensil. Now if she could just keep her left hand on her purple locks and grab a chopstick with her right.

"Hinata-sama?"

Hinata instantly dropped the lone chopstick and her left hand slowly retreated to her side. She let her shoulders shrug and turned around to come to face 'the intruder'. _So much for stealth and utensil hygiene_.

"Neji-niisan." the way she spoke gave away the disappointment she felt. _Now what do I do? _She was glad that she can probably have a chat with him now. She sadly looked at her bowl of Soba Herring.

The brown-haired Hyuuga went closer and picked up the dropped chopstick. "You look... sad. Is there something wrong?"

_Nothing's wrong. I just can't eat my noodles without a hair tie. _Her eyebrows met as she appeared to be in deep thought. She didn't know how to lie to Neji Hyuuga. She suddenly sat straight and remembered her manners. "Have you had dinner already?"

Neji carefully eyed her and responded "Yes. I just dropped by to get some water. Are you sure you're okay?" He smoothed out her hair as her excuse of a messy bun caused several hairs to go astray. He then noticed that the shorter ends were damp and somewhat sticky.

"U...Uh... I f-forgot my hair tie! Some got soaked on the soup." She finally let out what was bothering her. "I wanted to use that chopstick to set my bun." She frowned as she looked at him.

His expression softened as he understood the situation. He took two steps to get behind her and slowly grabbed her hair to form a ponytail. He then removed his own hair tie to fix it into place. "There. You can eat properly now." He smiled as he took the seat in front of her.

The blue-haired Hyuuga had a tinge of pink on her cheeks and couldn't help but touch her ponytail to make sure it's secured. "Thank you nii-san!" She slowly noticed that several strands of his hair were slowly making its way to his face. She clutched the hair tie on her at the sudden realization. "You removed yours! Nii-san..." she directed her frown to him for the second time.

"As I said, I already had dinner. Getting my hair into water won't be too bad." He slowly filled a glass with water and he did it very nicely that none of his hair touched the water. He even tucked several strands under his left ear.

Knowing that Hinata couldn't protest further. She grabbed her chopsticks again and drank some soup out of the bowl. She also grabbed some noodles and took a bite of the herring. "Are you sure you're okay just watching me eat? This is your favorite after all."

He chuckled. "Well, I already ate. I just need to make sure your hair strands aren't hungry for soba."

Hinata smiled in response. "How was your mission?"

"The usual. Lee couldn't contain his excitement and almost lost his belongings. Tenten complained a lot and Gai-sensei initially freaked out several civilians."

She tried not to laugh too much but it was a funny picture. She knew Neji would always have to get them in line if his teammates were slowly veering away from the mission at hand.

–-

**Timeline: Somewhere around Chapter 700**

Hinata, Himawari, and Bolt sat on the dining table and were silently eating ramen for dinner. Naruto was currently away on a diplomacy mission and the kids asked if they can have his favorite food for dinner because they missed him. Hinata obliged and was delighted when she saw the excited expressions on her kids' faces when she put several bowls of Ichiraku Ramen on their table.

Himawari was able to grab a few toppings and was now having difficulty grabbing the noodles. Hinata noticed the difficulty she was having and without saying a word, she pulled new pairs of chopsticks and grabbed several strands of noodles to her daughter's mouth.

"Mom! Your hair's on the soup!" Bolt exclaimed and now stood on his chair to grab her hair out of the soup.

Hinata slowly set the chopsticks down and fastened her makeshift ponytail with a hairtie on her left hand. She smiled at her son and tapped on his seat to make him sit down again. She also brushed a thumb on his right cheek to remove a stray spring onion. "Thank you Bolt."

Her son flushed slightly with the gesture and Hinata responded with a smile.


End file.
